SL revises 2022 tourist arrivals forecast down to 1.1 million

• Earlier goal was to attract 2.3 m tourists this year
• Tourism Minister Ranatunga says target revised down due to surge in ‘Omicron’ in tourist-source markets
• Expresses optimism on tourism rebounding following tactical and concentrated market approach
• SL welcomes 76,538 tourists so far in January; unlikely to beat post-COVID record set in December
• Minister says if momentum continues till 1H, industry would see a faster recovery
• Russia dominates tourist traffic with 12,368, followed by India, Ukraine, UK, Germany, France

By Charumini de Silva

Sri Lanka is revising down the tourist arrivals forecast for 2022 to 1.1 million from an earlier ambitious goal of luring 2.3 million, a move influenced by the surge in ‘Omicron’ variant in major source markets. 

“We expect over 1.1 million tourists to visit the country this year, whilst the short, medium and long-term strategies rolled out by Sri Lanka Tourism will assist to reach the year-end goal,” Tourism Minister Prasanna Ranatunga said yesterday.

The latest forecast appears realistic, though challenging, given the pandemic. Minister Ranatunga announced the 2.3 million tourists target during a briefing to international media on 3 January at the Expo 2020 in Dubai.

Minister Ranatunga said yesterday that the spike in COVID cases, particularly in top source markets in Western Europe and India, has slowed down the tourist arrivals, whilst the strict outbound travel restrictions imposed by China and Japan, too, had impacted the numbers. 

Last week, he told the Daily FT that the monthly target of 100,000 to 125,000 arrivals will not be accomplished, noting that the future trend of tourism remains uncertain amidst the evolving nature of the pandemic and other correlated variables such as travel restrictions, vaccination rates and efforts in curtailing the pandemic.

As of yesterday, COVID-19 cases reported globally amounted to 373.58 million in 200 countries with 5.6 million deaths. The US, India and Brazil have seen the highest number of confirmed cases, followed by the UK, France and Russia.

As per provisional data released by the Tourism Ministry yesterday, Sri Lanka has received 76,538 tourists in the first 29 days. Within the past week, there has been a significant increase of 17,538 tourists. However, January is unlikely to beat the best performing month of December post-COVID, which attracted 89,500 tourists. 

Despite surge in its COVID cases, Russia continues to dominate among the top tourist source market for Sri Lanka with 12,368, followed by India with 11,028, Ukrainian 7,427, UK 6,929, Germany 4,902 and France 3,337. In addition, tourists were also received from countries such as Poland, Australia, Maldives and Kazakhstan during the first 29 days of the month.

Although the spread of the COVID Omicron variant has hampered the global travel trade again, Ranatunga said with the success of the national vaccination program, more tourists are concentrating on Sri Lanka for their next holiday destination. Sri Lanka finished 2021 with 194,495 tourists, with December attracting 89,506 — the highest for a month since the onset of the pandemic in March 2020. Ranatunga was optimistic that Sri Lanka would rebound to levels similar to that of pre-COVID courtesy of a tactical and concentrated marketing approach to attract travellers.

Since mid-2021, Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau (SLTPB) rolled out promotions in several countries, including Russia, France, Germany and the UK. The inflow of tourists has been boosted by increased connectivity as well by international airlines.

Given the challenges global travellers encounter to reach their final destination amidst health protocols, the industry experts pointed out that the travellers under the ‘new normal’ will want to explore the long-haul countries to the fullest.

“Post-pandemic we saw a lot of tourists coming to Sri Lanka for wellness tourism and vacation with family. These tourists stay longer than usual, which extends to a minimum 14 or more days. It’s a great trend that we hope would continue from long-haul travellers,” industry experts added. 

The stakeholders hoped that if the momentum would continue till the first half of the year, the industry would see a faster recovery. Sri Lanka lost over $ 10 billion during the past two years from tourism sector earnings.